


it’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere

by elizajumel



Series: wedded bliss extension pack [2]
Category: 18th Century CE RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:42:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24345961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajumel/pseuds/elizajumel
Summary: “I sometimes feel like I am your therapist when we’re naked,” Aaron says placidly.
Relationships: Aaron Burr/Alexander Hamilton
Series: wedded bliss extension pack [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1756147
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	it’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Religious Duty](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6178921) by [ghostburr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostburr/pseuds/ghostburr). 



“Don’t you ever take it off?”

Fresh out of the shower, Aaron jumps at the other man’s sudden appearance. “My robe?”

“No, colonel, not the robe. Though you do spend more of most evenings swanning around the house in it than is strictly dignified for a man of your age.” Alexander shuts the bedroom door behind him and nods in Aaron’s general direction. “That.”

Aaron looks down, bewildered, and a dull glint catches his eye. “I’m still not sure what you mean,” he lies.

Alexander’s eyes rove toward the ceiling. “God mend you. The ring, Aaron.”

“The ring?”

“Please, don’t play coy.”

“Ah.” Aaron raises his left hand, stupidly. “This one.”

“I was thinking about it while you were in there,” Alexander says. Aaron raises his eyebrows and crosses to the bed, removing the offending robe and hanging it over the headboard. Alexander follows him. “You don’t take it off to shower?”

“No. Should I? Is the water not good for the metal?”

Alexander waves his questions aside. “You keep it on when we sleep too, don’t you?”

Aaron shrugs, picking at the sleeve of his pajama shirt. “It’s not uncomfortable. I can hardly feel it.”

“When you first asked me to marry you, you said you didn’t like jewelry.”

“Not particularly, no.”

“So why is it that when I do this—” and without warning, Alexander’s left hand comes up to cup Aaron’s face, ring finger pressing insistently into the line of Aaron’s jaw, then curls up and drags knuckle-side down over the soft part of Aaron’s neck, and Aaron grabs hold of the edge of the mattress to keep his knees from buckling. “ _That,_ ” Alexander says triumphantly. “What is that, colonel? Do you have some kind of jewelry fetish?”

“Call the press,” Aaron says, striving for a dry shut-down but tightening his grip on the sheets for support. “The people need to know.”

Alexander, blessedly, pulls away and leans back against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. When he speaks again, he sounds, Aaron notes with dismay, the same way he does when he's building a case. “You gave me so much grief about wanting to get rings. Blathering on about some fifty-cent candy machine at the drugstore.”

“I told you, it seemed unnecessary. Getting the license was the important part.”

“The rings were essential to the ruse _,_ colonel. Like living together or writing vows to read at the ceremony. It’s not just about the legal aspect, it’s about keeping up appearances.”

“Is _that_ what we’ve been doing?” Aaron widens his eyes and lays a hand over his heart. “General, you devastate me. And all this time…”

“Stop—” Alexander drops his face into his hands, a suppressed laugh apparent in his voice. “Stop twisting my words. We’re getting off-topic.”

“And what exactly is our topic? So I have come to accept the necessity of wearing rings. So I like the ones we picked out together.” Aaron shrugs. “Hardly sensational.”

“Oh, I don’t think you _like_ them, colonel.” Alexander pushes off the wall, smile pulling back to show teeth.

Aaron summons all the equanimity for which he was known in another life. “What do you think, then, since you are always right?”

“ _I_ think,” and Alexander arrives in front of him, close enough that his breath hits Aaron’s parted mouth, then the shell of his ear, as his hand closes lightly around Aaron’s throat. The thin gold band emits a persistent metallic thrum against the pulse of the vein. Aaron feels the cool heat of his own like a living thing as Alexander’s fingers constrict in degrees. “I think you may be one of the last great romantics, Mr. Burr.”

Aaron tries to laugh, and Alexander’s grasp tightens, just enough to force the sound back into his throat. “How do you figure that?” he gets out in a whisper.

“You were completely overwhelmed when we found those rings in the shop. You stare at your own hand sometimes when you think no one’s watching.” Alexander lays out the evidence like a seasoned attorney. As he speaks, his free hand threads through Aaron’s hair, then jerks it back with the last word. A soft curse escapes Aaron’s mouth, unbidden. “You don’t like the rings. You love them. You love seeing mine on me, and feeling it on your skin when I touch you. It gets you hard.” Alexander releases him momentarily, hands skimming lower, hooking his fingers along the elastic of his pants to pull their bodies flush. “My case is airtight. Exhibit A.”

Aaron feels stripped, pinned in place, the teasing light in the other man’s eyes belying their intensity. “You always were hard to argue with.”

“And you impossible to get a straight answer from. But it doesn’t matter.”

“No?” Aaron manages.

“No. I know you,” Alexander says, so smug and sure that Aaron almost laughs, wants to see if it would faze the other man, but finds himself stunned speechless. Alexander continues, voice dropping, “You are mine. I am yours. We have always belonged to each other.”

The desire to laugh dies in the back of Aaron’s throat. Other desires push their way to the front of his mind, warring with old and lesser instincts: flight, denial, panic. To hear it put so plainly…

“That is what these rings represent, to me,” Alexander finishes, softer. “I will never leave you again. I swear it, colonel.”

“You swear it?” Aaron echoes, hearing the words as though from outside his own body.

“On my honor as a gentleman.”

“Well, you’ve gone and jinxed it now.”

The cocky smile returns to Alexander’s face. “Kiss me, then. To seal the deal.”

“Is that what we should have done instead, back in the day?” Alexander gives him a look and Aaron relents, leans in to press their mouths together. Alexander responds in full force, pushing Aaron onto the bed and crawling on top of him. Aaron lifts his arms obligingly for the other man to remove his shirt, but Alexander stops short of taking it off altogether, leaving his wrists tangled above his head in the excess fabric.

“Better to keep you where I can see what you’re doing,” Alexander murmurs, leaning over him, pressing his trapped wrists into the pillow. “That was my reasoning.”

Aaron grins up at him, feeling more in his element now. “You just couldn’t leave me alone, could you?”

Alexander slaps him. Aaron jerks involuntarily, his impulse to bring a hand to his cheek stymied. His lover tilts his head to one side, watching the rush of blood to his face that Aaron can feel. He strains against the shirt, knowing that Alexander will like it. “Pretty,” Alexander says, touching a fingertip to Aaron’s stinging cheek. “Pretty little Burr. Always so generous and obliging. I would get so jealous, you know, watching you drink and flirt with every other pretty face at the party.”

I know, Aaron thinks but can’t quite force from the tip of his tongue, I know you. Alexander makes quick work of the rest of their clothes, leaves his wrists caught over his head, snakes down his body and takes him into his mouth, deep with no hesitation. Fucks him open with fingers slick from the lube on their bedside table and talks the whole while, recounts lingering glances and eyes locked from across a room and his own late-night hungers, and Aaron listens, marvels, lets himself fall apart because he knows Alexander loves it, this insatiable man he belongs to.

Alexander presses into him, discards the shirt and weaves their fingers together, the press of their rings the only cool points of contact between them. His pace is brutal, having talked himself into a fury, and Aaron takes it as he had so many times before, the brunt of his implacable passion in all its different forms: the resentment, the envy, the self-righteousness, the wanting; always that. He feels the sheets give way beneath them, a corner come loose in his balled-up fist. Alexander talks and talks, calls him little Burr again, and colonel, a good soldier, a good boy. Aaron can feel him getting close, the familiar hitch of breath, the way the sound of skin on skin turns him on and spurs him faster. He closes his eyes against the onslaught. Alexander gives his hair a quick, harsh tug to bring him to attention, grips his chin to line up their eyes and whispers, “Husband.”

Aaron comes from that, any shame he ought to feel about it utterly overwhelmed as Alexander fucks him through it, barely slowing. Boneless and spent, he cards his fingers through the other man’s hair to hold him close. He enjoys how quickly the tables turn, his own release bringing Alexander to the edge, panting his usual desperate litany against Aaron’s mouth, in and out of control at once. He relishes in the last few hard thrusts as Alexander finishes, then collapses on his chest with a breathless laugh. “I should have known,” he says.

Aaron brings a reverent fingertip to that laughing mouth. “Known what?”

“Only you would get off to your own marriage.” Alexander catches his hand and kisses it, turns his palm over to watch the light run across the ring. “Textbook narcissist.”

“Mary might disagree with you,” Aaron says, letting the other man play with his hand. “She thinks I am making considerable progress in my willingness to practice vulnerability.”

Alexander snorts. “No talking about your therapist when we’re naked.”

“I sometimes feel like _I_ am your therapist when we’re naked,” Aaron says placidly.

Alexander drops his hand. “You _love_ when I talk.”

“Like I could stop you even if I didn’t.”

“Mm, for next time,” says Alexander, sliding off of him and stretching out like a cat. “Shut me up. I’ll be so sweet for you, colonel.”

Aaron makes an involuntary sound at the thought and rolls on top of the other man, pressing a kiss to the damp skin of his neck. Alexander smirks up at him. “Ready to go again?”

“If you keep talking like that.”

Alexander opens his mouth, then shuts it, considering. “Never mind. I’m hungry.”

Aaron scoffs, but he’s already reaching for his phone on the bedside table. “Where do you want to order from?”

Alexander props himself up on his elbows. “I was thinking we could cook instead.”

“General, not this again.”

“Your reluctance for cooking together is as patrician as it is unwarranted. I _have_ cooked successfully.”

“Squirting prepackaged icing on top of a Toaster Strudel doesn’t count.”

“Fuck you,” Alexander says with no heat. “But we don’t have anything in the fridge to cook anyway, I suppose. How do you feel about Mexican?”

Aaron types the suggestion into his phone. “Speaking of Mary, I wonder sometimes if we should send her a thank-you note.”

Alexander frowns. “Is that customary?”

“Not for the therapy,” Aaron clarifies. “For…helping us get here, I suppose.” He scrolls through their options, aware of Alexander’s eyes on him. “The food truck around the corner is open until eleven. Four point seven stars.”

“Hm,” Alexander says, and Aaron forces himself to look up. Alexander has never even tried to manage his face, and its current expression of unchecked affection would have made Aaron feel naked if he wasn’t already. “If so, we’d have to go much farther back than Dr. Blood. Rufus King tops the list for pushing me to publish that ad and meet with you in the first place.” Alexander grimaces suddenly. “James Monroe, for forcing your hand when we went to Virginia. De Sade. Jumel. _Callendar._ My God, colonel.”

Aaron bursts out laughing. “Forget I said anything.”

“No need for additional thank-yous.”

“We would have gotten here on our own at some point.”

“Surely.”

They smile at each other.

“Now, if you truly love me,” Alexander begins.

“If you want Mexican food, you’re going to have to put on pants and walk outside with me to get some, general.”

Alexander pouts, but reaches for the pile of discarded clothes at the foot of the bed. “It is for the best, I think, how things worked out. That we had to come back in order to do this right,” he says contemplatively, shrugging on Aaron’s pajama shirt. “Because if you had kissed me back then…perhaps we would have come to a different conclusion. And then we wouldn’t be here now…and I would never have tasted Toaster Strudel.”

Aaron slides down the bed to do the buttons. “And wouldn’t that have been a shame.”

“Very much so. There was nothing like that in the eighteenth century…breakfast on the _go_ , colonel. Can you imagine how much more productive I could have been?”

“I shudder at the thought.”

Alexander smooths the shirt down over his front, pleased. “This is better on me than on you, I think.”

“General, we are the exact same size.”

“My point stands.” Alexander throws the rest of the clothing heap at him. “Find my pants in there. It’s ten thirty-seven. I want a burrito _and_ a tostada.”

“You’re wearing my pajama shirt to go outside?”

“Don’t be jealous because it looks better on me.”

“You won’t complain if I wear my robe, then.”

Alexander groans. “Please, colonel, show some sense of decorum.”

“Surely you forget who you’re talking to.”

“You are quite hopeless,” Alexander concedes, leaning over to press a kiss to his cheek. “Now hurry up. I’ll meet you in the lobby, I have some books I ordered waiting in the mailbox.”

“I could just come down naked,” Aaron calls after him.

Alexander snorts, pausing by the bedroom door. “Despicable,” he mutters, and adds, “You’re paying, colonel.”

Aaron smiles.

 _Sir,_ I _met him_. And again, and again, and again.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Richard Siken's "Scheherazade."


End file.
